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Chapter Four

Tynan

I stared at Jon’s service photo on the screen. His crystal blue eyes were so damn bright it was like he was right there on the other side. Even in the image, he still had that look about him like he was…indestructible. Hell, it was how I’d always seen him. Thought of him. Like there was nothing that could take him down.

Until there was.

“Dammit, Jon,” I muttered and swirled the hot coffee in my mug, taking a big swig of the black liquid, wishing there was something stronger in it to take the edge off.

Even if I had opted for an Irish coffee, it wouldn’t do any good. I’d learned years ago that no matter how many cuts and burns and bullet holes my body had plastered over, the emotional wounds never healed. The pain and regret and guilt I carried festered like an open wound in my soul.

First, we’d lost Ryan; our final mission with him should’ve been my last. But then Jon asked me to go back. Begged me to join his team for one single mission—and Jon never begged. And then I’d lost him, too.

Losing a brother in battle was like losing a limb, and in the span of a year, I’d lost two. How the hell was anyone supposed to function normally after that? You didn’t— couldn’t .

Those emotional injuries came with a phantom pain that haunted me day and night no matter how deep I buried it. No matter how good I was at burying it. The thing they never tell you about killing is that you better be good as hell at burying, too. And living with ghosts.

But Sutton Brant was no ghost. Not anymore.

I might’ve been able to bury the little girl twirling in her princess dress along with the rest of her father’s memory, but I couldn’t bury the beautiful woman who’d been delivered to my doorstep. I couldn’t bury the blue-flamed anger in her eyes, the desperate defiance of her every move, nor the crippling hunger I felt to care for her in ways that were both acceptable and so fucking inappropriate, they should be illegal.

Suddenly, those blue eyes staring out at me looked far too suspicious of what I was thinking. I closed the photo, but before I could return to my work, my phone buzzed.

You know I have eaten in the last four months.

Air rushed through my lips like my lungs were still remembering how to laugh.

The attitude would’ve given her away even if I hadn’t already programmed Sutton’s number into my phone.

I opened the message, only partially regretting my deception. Yeah, I’d left her my number because I wanted her to trust me. Wanted her to be the one to reach out first. But I’d also had a backup plan.

I’d taken her cell out of her bag as I’d carried it inside, and while she was in her bath, I not only entered the number into mine, but also installed a tracker on it. Just in case.

I messaged back.

I wanted you to have options.

Was it too much? I had no fucking clue. But I did know the woman had just been dropped off by her parole officer with a warning that there’d be no more warnings. I did know I had a duty to my fallen friend to make sure nothing happened to his daughter. And most of all, I knew she was keeping things from me.

I was good at reading people—situations. To be Special Forces, to tackle the kind of unconventional missions we took, you had to be obsessively perceptive. Instantaneously discerning. And there were three things immediately clear to me from the first few minutes in Sutton’s presence.

She was authoritatively defiant, offensively guarded, and defensively dishonest.

But even if every trained instinct hadn’t gone on alert from the second she’d given me that story about breaking in for her cell phone, her eyes would’ve drawn my skepticism.

Sutton had her father’s eyes. It was more than the same porcelain blue. It was also the light streaks of his same stubbornness and the dark flecks of his determination. But most strikingly, was their shared, sharp glint of reckless self-sacrifice. That heroic-armored martyrdom was what cost Jon his life.

And now, I saw that same goddamn recklessness in hers.

She was lying to me about the break-in. She was lying when she said she didn’t need anything. She was in trouble, I could sense it. I could fucking taste it. And fuck me, I owed it to Jon to do whatever I could to help her and make it right.

This is the entire deli department.

Again, the foreign sound of a chuckle bubbled from my chest.

The first thing I’d done after coming back to the garage last night had been twenty minutes with the punching bag in the gym, followed by an ice-cold shower and my hand on my cock. The second, an online grocery order to be delivered to the townhouse this morning with all the options for breakfast and a bunch of deli meats, cheeses, and sliced bread so she could make herself lunch.

You’re welcome.

You’re assuming I like meat.

I stiffened, and I had to wonder what the fuck kind of short circuit she’d caused in my brain to make me read into things with all the maturity of a teenager.

My thumbs hesitated on the screen before typing.

Do you?

She drew out her response on purpose, I could just feel it.

Yes.

I reached down to adjust my cock, my jeans pinching where my row of piercings pressed along the zipper.

Why I’d decided to pick a Jacob’s ladder when Ryan dared us to all get our dicks pierced, I’ll never know. Another moment of insanity. Just like this one.

As I shifted in my seat, I felt the soreness in my abdomen from where she’d booted me in the gut. Sutton was small—her slight frame obvious at every turn—but goddamn, if that didn’t make her even more dangerous. Small but deadly. Just like a little wasp.

“Damn,” I groaned and let out a strained laugh. What the hell kind of woman could hurt me with both desire and pain?

Jon’s daughter, that’s who. His. Fucking. Daughter.

Good.

I sent the message and then closed my phone. Sutton was fine. She was fed. She was safe. My obligations for the moment were met.

And then it buzzed it again.

Dammit.

Is this for dinner, too, or should I expect another delivery later?

Another message came through right after.

To be clear, I don’t need more food.

I gritted my teeth and fired off another message.

I’ll be over later to cook you dinner.

My hope was to get more answers out of her then.

When?

My brow creased, my gut suddenly feeling like something was off.

Later.

I purposely baited her.

Let me know when you’re coming.

My gut made another inappropriate twist. Was she doing it on purpose?

Why?

Because there’s a hot tub on the roof of this place, and I don’t have a bathing suit.

Fuck.

I thought I’d been baiting her, and suddenly, I was the one caught hook, line, and hard-on.

My dick turned from hard to stone. In an instant, the hours and effort and hell, pain I’d spent since last night to try and bury the desire I felt for her were assaulted with the effortless, destructive force of a hurricane. Every detail drowned me. Every sensation blew my sanity away.

Her full, delicious lips. The sounds they’d made when she ate my food. How little that damn robe left to the imagination. An imagination that now pictured her in the hot tub. Her hair pulled up. All that silken skin exposed, her body a stenciled gallery of her secrets—her past, her pain.

It was those tattoos that captivated me. The need to decipher what each meant. The flowers on her shoulders. The vine around her left wrist. The wasp on her right. And something…something delicate, two sets of mirrored dots and lines sweeping down her sternum and curving underneath her robe—underneath each of her breasts. Her pierced fucking breasts.

Fuck.

A deep groan broke from my chest. There was no hiding them—she made no attempt to hide them. And goddamn, there was no way to hide how fucking hard it made me.

Fuck.

I’ll let you know.

I furiously sent the message and let my phone drop onto the desk so I could stand and adjust my cock that now throbbed painfully.

God, I was a fucking asshole. Desiring my dead friend’s daughter.

Jon’s daughter.

I had to keep reminding myself of him—of who she was to him, so I wouldn’t forget what she could never be to me.

“Ty?”

I turned and sat, swallowing a curse. How long had Harm been standing in the doorway?

“Come in.” I clicked the mouse furiously, my screen dark from being idle for so long.

“You alright?” he asked, closing the door and leveling me with an assessing stare.

Harmon Keyes was trained to be just as perceptive as I was. A quality I’d appreciated and admired right up until this moment.

“Just trying to figure out how to…handle Sutton,” I admitted.

I’d been honest last night when I told Sutton I was messaging Harm to explain what happened. While I felt like I had the situation with Sutton under control, Harm needed to know. As a precaution. And because I didn’t want to feel like I was hiding her. Like there was a reason to keep her to myself.

“What did you find out?” Harm banded his arms over his chest.

“Not much. Not enough,” I grunted, my throat tight.

I looked at the notepad on the desk, scribbles of events and timelines, trying to make sense of what I knew about Sutton, but somehow only highlighting everything that was still a void.

“She was released from juvie about four months ago and has been living at a hostel and working as a seamstress.”

I still couldn’t reconcile the last time I’d seen her, standing beside Angela at Jon’s funeral, with now. How many fucking things had happened to her in the last five years? Her mom dying. Juvenile detention. Parole. How many of them could’ve been avoided if Jon hadn’t died?

“And her mom?”

“Murdered.” My jaw tensed.

“Damn.”

As soon as I’d placed the grocery order last night, I’d immediately searched for Angela’s obituary. Imagine my surprise when my scan also resulted in a police report.

Sutton hadn’t lied that her mother was dead. She’d chosen not to share Angela had been murdered by her drug dealer boyfriend.

“Yeah.”I winced. A year after losing her father, her mother was gone, too—taken by a different yet traumatically similar violent suddenness. “I had no idea…”

And why would I? I was close with Jon, not with Angela or Sutton. I only knew about Sutton by proxy. By stories and smiles and regrets of a good man who’d missed most of his daughter’s life because of his own demons.

Still…secluded in my world of vigilante justice, I’d completely missed that Jon’s daughter became an orphan on the brink of eighteen.

“So, the officer said she violated her parole?” Harm asked.

I nodded slowly, feeling my jaw clench as I repeated the story Sutton wanted me to believe. “He said she was breaking and entering. She claims the apartment was her friend’s, and she’d left her phone there. Friend was gone, so she picked the lock to let herself in. Said the security guard at the building doesn’t like her, so he called the police.”

“And they brought her here?”

“They gave her a choice. Babysitter or prison. She gave them my name,” I said, knowing it wasn’t a good thing. Sure, she’d thought of me, but it was a pretty bad fucking sign that the only person she could think of to help her was a friend of her dad’s whom she’d only met twice.

She had no one else. No family. No friends. No one but me.

My stomach tightened, hit again with that overwhelming hunger to take care of her that felt like it was going to devour me whole. Maybe she had no one else before, but now that she’d come to me… no. I shoved those thoughts out of my mind.

“You believe her?” Harm’s voice brought me back to the moment.

“Some.”

“And juvie?”

“Record is sealed, and she’s not sharing.” I sighed, drumming my fingers on the desk. “Her dad and then her mom within a year. Her mom was murdered by a drug dealer.” I ticked off the tragedies with my fingers. “Whatever she did, it had to be pretty close to when her mom died.”

“Acting out from all that loss?” Harm said low, bringing voice to my thoughts.

My lip twitched, recalling how she’d just gone and sat on one of our customer’s motorcycles in the garage. “Certainly would be a reasonable assumption.” And to some extent understandable.

“I can make some calls?—”

“Thanks, but I already did,” I said, rubbing my hand along my jaw.

“Talon?”

I nodded again. Talon Rhodes worked for Armorous Tactical, a large private security firm outside of San Francisco. In addition to handling their own clients, they provided support for the city’s law enforcement teams as well as the courts and the Marshals. Talon had connections deep in the city’s court system, so I’d messaged him for a favor: details on Sutton’s record.

It was a long shot. Juvenile records were sealed for a reason. And hell, it probably wasn’t related to…anything about Sutton being here. But goddammit, I needed to know.

The obligation to a man I loved—a man I’d failed—snuck into my system like poison and demanded the antidote of answers. I needed to know what the hell happened to her. Needed to know what other failures I was responsible for.

“What can I do?”

“Nothing right now—not for her,” I told him. Unfortunately, Sutton wasn’t the only mystery I had to deal with. “Take a look at this.”

With a few clicks, I put up on the screen GrowTech’s press conference from yesterday, replaying the moment when Belmont announced Brock Carson would be stepping in as COO of the company. A moment that seemed like a lifetime ago since my past exploded on my doorstep and left a bombshell in its wake.

“Carson…” Harm drawled with a low voice. “Why do I know that name?”

“He’s scum.” In the little time my software had spent digging and combing information on Carson, my initial perception of him had only shaded in darker. “Harvard business grad turned middleman between the wealthy elite and every kind of criminal. Mexican cartels. Chinese Triad. Russian mob. Middle Eastern Mafia. He’ll contract with anyone to get what his clients want. Drugs. Weapons. Stolen art and antiquities.” My jaw twitched. “He’s been worming his way up the food chain for a few years now. Staying slimy enough not to get caught.”

“Why does Belmont want him?” Harm scowled. “Carson doesn’t seem like the face you want to put on a business, especially when Belmont has to be in crisis mode, trying to keep his company appear above board.”

My eyes flicked to Harm.

“What is it?” he demanded.

“I don’t have proof, but I think it has to do with this.” I opened up the image that had been at the top of my results folder this morning and slid the image onto the screen. “Carson has friends in…low places,” I said, watching Harm’s jaw drop.

“Are you…” He snapped his head to me. “You think this has to do with Shazad?”

Amir Shazad was the head of the Pakistani Mafia and the man behind the majority of the illegal heroin trade out of Afghanistan. And this wasn’t our first run-in with the criminal kingpin.

About a year ago, Harm had been hired to guard Daria Sinclair, the daughter of another dangerous criminal, Magnus Sinclair. Magnus tried to form an alliance with Amir Shazad by arranging a marriage between Daria and Amir’s son, Uzair. In exchange, Magnus would run the North and South American distribution of Shazad’s heroin exports.

The image I’d put on the screen was taken at the engagement ball Magnus had orchestrated. It was of Brock Carson smiling and standing next to Uzair, the two of them looking like the oldest of friends.

“I dug deeper. Carson and Uzair were in the same MBA program.”

“So, he’s close with the Shazads,” Harm muttered.

“What if it’s more than that?”

Harm’s gaze flicked back to me. “What are you thinking?”

“I tell you, but I’m warning you now, I’ve got no proof.”

“Fair enough.”

I cleared my throat and tapped my finger on my desk like I was marking the starting point. “When this photo was taken, we know Shazad was trying to partner with Sinclair to expand his heroin distribution to North and South America.” Harm nodded, so I went on. “That obviously didn’t happen because Sinclair was taken out of the picture, but if Carson was there and he knew the extent of what was going on through Uzair”—I jerked my chin at the photo of the two of them talking as if the image captured this exact conversation—“then he would know that with Sinclair gone, there was an opportunity for a new distributor, and for him to broker that deal.”

“Go on…”

“From here, I have two theories. Either Carson saw the openings in Belmont’s organization and realized GrowTech would be the perfect partner with their chemical labs and commercial distribution channels, or Amir Shazad knew of Sinclair’s prior association with GrowTech, realized they’d be the perfect organization to funnel his heroin trade through, and approached Carson to facilitate the deal. Either way…”

“Carson brings the offer to Belmont. Belmont sees a huge financial opportunity, and Carson gets installed at GrowTech to cement the arrangement,” he finished for me.

I grunted in agreement. “Now all I need is proof.” A mountain of it.

No matter what my gut was screaming, I couldn’t assume criminal dealings on the basis of a single photograph.

Harm leaned forward, resting his knuckles on the table and staring at the photograph. “Well, we’ve got an obvious link between Belmont and Carson, but if there’s a chance that connection is because of Shazad and he’s still trying to expand his operation here…”

“We have to stop him.”

“But the right way.” Harm exhaled with a low rumble. “We can’t risk…”

“I know.” We’d been after Belmont for so long for what he did to Rob and her parents; it was hard to believe this could finally be the lynchpin that sent him and his company crumbling.

Harm cleared his throat and spoke again. “There has to be something else tying Carson to Uzair besides friendship and an MBA.”

“I agree.” I stared at the photo. “And I have to wonder…”

My friend arched an eyebrow.

“If Carson’s specialty is procurement for the elite, what if he’s been the one providing Uzair with…women?”

The last time we’d entered the orbit of the Shazad’s, we’d learned how Uzair was well-known for his sadistic sexual preferences. The kind that necessitated unwilling victims.

Harm’s jaw pulsed. “If he is…”

“I’m going to keep looking.” For some reason, this was where my gut was leading me.

“I’ll talk to Rob. I’m assuming she saw the press conference. I’ll see if she has any info on Carson.” He started to reach for his phone.

“Harm,” I stopped him. “Do you think Remington is somehow involved in this?”

He stilled and slowly looked up at me.

If all of us—me, Harm, the guys, Rob, Carson, Shazad, and Belmont—were faces of opposing suits in a deck of cards, Damon Remington was the Joker. He played any suit or none of them. He helped. He hindered. He appeared and disappeared as though abiding by either no rules or a set of his own.

Remington was both a former FBI agent and currently number one on the FBI’s Most Wanted List. He was an operative turned traitor turned gentleman criminal. He lived in the shadows of the illegal underworld, and like Charon on the river Styx, he ferried the means, materials, and connections between various criminal enterprises, portraying himself like a criminal consultant.

He’d existed virtually unseen for over a decade. A ghost…until recently. Out of all the places, all the people, all the criminals, Remington repeatedly showed up here (figuratively never physically) to insert himself into our cases and hand us clues to take down the men involved in Belmont’s GrowTech cover-up.

The question why loomed above us like a dark cloud.

“He was at Shazad’s party that night…” I said low as though Harm of all people needed the reminder that it was Remington that had not only saved Daria, but then delivered her villainous father to the FBI.

“I honestly don’t know. I’ll see what Rob thinks,” he said, but his locked jaw wouldn’t release.

We both knew the fifth and final member of our vigilante club was the most secretive of us all. Especially when it came to Damon Remington.

My eyes flicked to my phone, wondering if Sutton had messaged me again. We all had our own secrets.

“I’ll keep working on this and let you know what I find.”

“Thanks. I’ll do the same,” he replied, typing out a message as he exited the office.

“Yeah,” I said low as the door closed behind him. I tipped my head back and covered my eyes. Shazad…Belmont…Remington…

Sutton.

Crystal blue eyes stared back through the ether of my thoughts. Her lips parted as she freed the tie of that damn robe she’d sauntered around in, the silk slipping right off her shoulders as she stepped into the hot tub?—

“Fuck,” I growled and sat up straight, my cock officially hard as a fucking rock again.

This time, I didn’t adjust it. I let the pain punish me as I grabbed my earbuds and went to work. Just like everything else I’d learned by threat of pain, dismemberment, or death, I’d eventually learn to stop wanting my dead friend’s daughter.

Hours later, I pressed my fingers to my pulsing temples and let out a breath.I’d spent the majority of the day laying hooks on the internet, on news outlets, and on law enforcement databases, and I’d reached out to Talon (again), knowing the list of favors I’d now owe him would be a mile long, and asked if he’d put some feelers out on the dark web for Carson and Shazad.

With frustratingly little to show for it, I turned off my music just as another message from Sutton came through.

What’s the alarm code for the house?

My body tightened, and I quickly replied.

Why? Where do you want to go?

Am I not allowed to leave?

I should’ve known I wouldn’t get the straightforward truth from her.

I don’t think that’s the best idea right now.

And I don’t think Officer Daws told you to keep me prisoner.

I could practically see the fury radiating off every word of her message.

I should’ve taken a beat to think about my response, but she got under my skin. Even with a text message, my cells tingled with ungrounded electricity.

I grunted and typed back.

No, he told me to look out for you, which is exactly what I’m doing.

I owed it to Jon to make sure she was okay more than I owed her her freedom.

The dots appeared as Sutton typed for a second and then vanished. After a few seconds, I swiped out another message.

I’ll be there soon to make dinner.

The dots came back.

I don’t need to be taken care of, Daddy.

Fuck. My dick jolted and swelled. Oh fuck. There were things that made me hard—that turned me on—but this…the idea of this was my kryptonite. I’d never had a woman call me daddy before because it never crossed my mind until Ryan with his goddamn dare to get our dicks pierced over a conversation about kinks.

I hadn’t thought much of it at the moment. Hard to dwell on anything but the stab of metal through the skin of my cock. But afterward…it was like a seed planted in the recesses of my mind. Someone to care for. To take care of all her wants. To be the beginning and the end of all her needs.

But not her. Not Sutton. Not my mentor’s daughter.

My thumbs threatened to crack through the screen as I typed out my reply.

Don’t call me that.

Thank God my low growl didn’t get sent along with the message.

Don’t bother coming. I’m not hungry.

Another lie. But after our conversations today…maybe it was better if I didn’t go over there. I didn’t need to be in close proximity to that smart mouth I was already fantasizing about long before it called me daddy.

I’d give myself one night of reprieve and her one night to cool down and then go over to check on her first thing tomorrow.

Fine.

I’d have pizza delivered to her anyway. She was mine to take care of whether she liked it or not.

Three slices of cold pizza and another couple hours later, I finally hit the power button on the computer screen, and the room shuttered into darkness, only the small colored lights of the servers and networking equipment flickering in the room.

I stood and checked my phone. “Damn.” It was almost ten o’clock. No wonder my head was pounding; I hadn’t stopped staring at my computer for the last eight hours.

Burying myself in work seemed to be the only way to keep Sutton off my mind. She was safe. Fed. Angry, but out of trouble . What more was I supposed to do? Until I knew more—until she trusted me more—trying to get her to talk was like approaching a caged animal.

I walked out of the office, closing the door behind me, and headed for the elevator at the end of the hall.

The Sherwood Garage was a front—a legitimate front, but a front nonetheless—for the expansive compound that existed in the wooded acres behind it. We’d needed both secrecy and seclusion to chase vigilante justice and shelter and solitude from the world after that final mission. In the same way an open wound needs to be sterilized before it can heal, we needed to be sequestered to process our losses.

I punched my code into the keypad and waited for the elevator.

Behind the garage, tucked in the thick forest, we’d built cabins to live in. Where I still lived. One by one, the rest had become hollow shells as Harm and Rhys and Dare found love and their way back into the world, and Rob came and went more like a ghost than a guest, haunting the garage every so often before something in her own pursuit of justice pulled her back to San Francisco.

The elevator descended below ground and opened up to the main hallway that tunneled into the forest. There, coded doors gave individual access to additional lengths of tunnels and staircases that eventually ascended into our cabins, all but mine had become nothing more than hollow arteries of amputated limbs.

Maybe someone would call what I felt sadness, but it would be a cheap term. It was life, and it happened as surely as death. I knew a long time ago that I would be the only one left standing in the end. I knew it the moment I’d walked out of Jon’s funeral. I hadn’t been able to save him, just like I hadn’t been able to save Ryan, and just like I wouldn’t be able to save myself. It was…too late for me.

But maybe I could save Sutton from whatever her fucking demons were. It was the least I could do for Jon. After all, I was the one who was supposed to draw fire, not him. I was the one who was supposed to go in first, not him. And if I had, I would’ve been the one to die. Not him.

I jolted, but it wasn’t the ding of the elevator that shook me from my thoughts; it was the vibration of my phone in my hand. I scowled when I saw the number, a chill filtering into my veins that held me frozen.

“Hello?” I answered Dante’s call.

“Are you at the townhouse?”

“No. Why?”

“I just got a notification from the security system that the alarm was tripped.”

I spun and stalked toward the garage. “What do you mean?”

“There’s an alarm for the front door and garage door, but I installed a separate silent one for the sliding door off the master bedroom to the small deck.”

My pace slowed. “So, she went onto the deck and tripped the system.”

His silence was more ominous than any answer. “I’ll send you the footage, and you tell me.”

My phone buzzed again with his message. Putting the call on hold, I opened the video and watched the view from the exterior camera as Sutton slipped out the side door. Reality hit me like a one-two punch.

Her short black dress and chunky black boots weren’t what you wore to relax on the small deck. Her bold eyeliner and dark lipstick even less so.

Anger hummed in my veins as she slid the door closed behind her and looked around like she was hiding from someone. From me. And then she fucking climbed over the railing and slinked along the shadows at the edge of the property and out of view.

“Fuck.” I picked up Dante’s call again and went into the garage, heading straight for my bike. “Thanks for the heads-up,” I grunted, shoving my arms into my leather jacket.

“There was a car that picked her up out front. I’ll text you the license plate.”

I didn’t have the time to tell him I didn’t need the information. Instead, I thanked him quickly and hung up. My motorcycle snarled alive underneath me as I opened the tracking app on my phone.

What the hell are you doing, little wasp? Later, I’d wonder where the nickname came from. Right now, my heart thudded too loudly in my ears. A war drum beating violently for answers.

The signal started to narrow before it locked on the bus station in Carmel. I grabbed my jacket and pulled up the bus schedules. At this time of night, there was only one departure that was leaving now, and it was headed for San Francisco.

The leather jacket pulled tighter over my shoulders like my body was swollen with the emotions I felt. I’d been so…secluded for so long. I hadn’t had to worry about anyone except the guys for so long, it was like my system didn’t know how to fucking handle it.

Or maybe I just didn’t know how to handle her.

Well, now I did.

Sutton Brant wasn’t going to come to me by choice. She wasn’t going to open up to me—trust me—just because I’d been a friend of her father’s. Whatever she was dealing with, she thought she was going to handle it on her own. And that was why, when I reached the end of the drive, I turned right toward the city rather than left toward Carmel.

I was going to let her get where she was going and see what was so important that she snuck out of the house at night to do it after I explicitly told her she wasn’t allowed to leave. Once I knew enough where she couldn’t look me in the eyes and tell me a bold-faced lie, I’d sit her down and finally get the truth from her beautiful lips.

Maybe then I’d be able to stop thinking about them in all the ways I shouldn’t.